The Hard Blue Sky (26 page)

He scrubbed himself—even his hair. And when he remembered it had been days since he’d had a bath, he rubbed even harder. He got soap in his eye and by the time he’d got it out and opened his eyes again, there was a circle of kids watching. Not giggling, not moving, only staring, solemnly.

For a minute they startled him, but he kept perfectly still. Then he went on with his shower. The damn kids, he thought, they were everywhere on the island, all at once.

He finished and, reaching up, turned off the nozzle. When he looked again, the kids were gone. They could come and go without making a sound. Sometimes at night he’d take a look out the forward porthole and he’d be sure he saw a little form up there in the bow. But by the time he’d got up, there wouldn’t be a thing. And there wouldn’t have been a sound.

“Talk about ghosts,” he muttered to himself.

“You are beautiful now, no?”

Inky spun around. Julius Arcenaux was sitting on one of the old sawhorses that had been left behind the sea-food plant.

Son of a bitching fairy, Inky thought … and then stopped. He had seen Julius pinching the girls when they passed behind the counter in his grocery. That wasn’t any fairy—but he had been sitting, watching.

Inky said: “I was beginning to smell like a goat.”

“All dress up for dancing, huh?”

Inky wrapped the towel around his waist and knotted it.

“No?”

“No,” Inky said, “I’m not much for dancing.”

“You should go,” Julius said, “maybe you find a girl could teach you, huh?”

“What I want a girl for?”

Julius shrugged. “You are grown big enough to know that.”

“Thanks,” Inky said.

Julius stretched his great fat body until the buttons on his shirt gaped open. “Never can tell.”

“Where’s the dancing?”

“Only one place.”

“Where’s that?”

“The Rendezvous.”

Inky ran his fingers through his wet hair, combing it. “I go down there for a drink, sometimes.”

Julius pursed his lips. “Go do some dancing, man.”

“Maybe,” Inky said.

“Here come a couple of nice little girls, man.” Julius pointed over Inky’s shoulder.

There were two girls coming along the wharf—and a kid with them. Inky recognized Annie.

“They must be coming for the late show,” he said.

“Huh?”

“I got to go get some clothes on.”

“Wait a minute, man, and meet them. … I introduce you.”

“No, thanks,” Inky said, and headed to the boat.

“What the matter with you? Ain’t you a man?”

Inky swung over the lifelines. “I’m just shy,” he said.

About eight o’clock he decided to go over to the Rendezvous. He’d been thinking about it for an hour or so. And the more he thought the better a glass of cold beer got to taste. He had whisky on the boat. He even went and got the bottle and poured a couple of jiggers over the cubes of ice he got from the refrigerator in the little galley. And he sat out on the deck under the little tent of mosquito-netting that hung from the boom, and drank.

And with each swallow he thought about the beer.

“When I finish …” he said aloud. Only I won’t hurry.

So he drank the whisky slowly and looked around, though you couldn’t see very much through the netting. And it was a good hour before he left the boat.

The beer was cold. He drank three bottles before he caught his breath. Then he put both elbows on the bar and stretched and took a deep breath.

The Rendezvous was crowding up. There were three or four men, like him, standing at the bar. He had seen them before, and he nodded to them. They made a little lifting motion with their glasses and looked away.

The tables that were usually pushed back against the wall were set out now, in a kind of big circle around an open dance floor. The band wasn’t playing—they had gone out somewhere. To have a drink: they always carried their own liquor—orange wine in gallon jugs. Heavy sweet wine that could make a man drunk and sick both, if he wasn’t used to it.

Most of the island would be here, Inky thought, at least all of them young enough and strong enough to dance.

Somebody was waving; he stared harder. It was Cecile. Sure it was. Only she was wearing an off-the-shoulder white blouse and a full red skirt, and she had a sprig of some pink flowers in her hair. If she hadn’t waved, he wouldn’t have recognized her. And the man with her, the heavy-set man with the long black hair glistening with hair oil and water, that was Hector. Inky nodded. Hector bowed politely.

His eyes were getting used to the dark. There was no light in the room at all. Only the red reflections from the four Jax beer signs hung in the front windows. The end of the long room was almost completely black. There weren’t even shapes back there, only giggles now and then.

“You come, huh?” Julius was at Inky’s elbow.

“You can see.”

“Tonight a big deal night, big week-end, for sure.”

“How come?”

“They started drinking last night at the wedding,” Julius grinned. “Don’t look like they going stop.”

“Everybody?”

“Except maybe the Livaudais.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Don’t feel like it,” Julius said. “They got a boy been gone too long out hunting.”

“The beer’s cold,” Inky said after a pause.

“My daughter looks nice and fine, no?”

“Sure,” Inky said. “And she’s got a good-looking husband, too.”

Julius snorted. “You see back there.” He pointed to the far end of the room.

“Who can see back there?”

Julius laughed and poured the last of his bottle into his glass. “You not supposed to see.”

“I figured that,” Inky said.

“Back there, it is like being all alone. Only you got music.”

“Yea.”

“Things that go on …” Julius clucked his tongue. “Rosalie Conte, she say she got a baby planted in her. And right back there.”

“She didn’t yell for help,” Inky said and dipped the tip of his nose in the foam of his glass.

Julius shrugged. “She didn’t need help, maybe.”

Inky was drinking the bitter beer in little short swallows and counting them.

The accordion-player came back in the room, and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, took his seat. He sat rocking back and forth on the unsteady legs of the cane chair and frowning down at the floor.

“Looks like he’s about to cry.”

“Always look like that,” Julius said.

“Where’s the other guy? The piano-player?”

“He be around before too long.”

“Hot in here.”

“Summer, man.”

“Jesus!”

“You got a right to ask any girl to dance and nobody get offended.”

“I keep telling you over and over again,” Inky said, “I’m not going crazy to dance.”

“Okay,” Julius said.

“I just want to get drunk, not much, just a little.”

“No more?” Julius leaned forward so that his little close-set brown eyes were only a foot from Inky’s.

Inky turned his back. “I still don’t want to get laid.”

Julius clucked lightly way down in his throat and walked off.

Inky bought another bottle of beer. The piano-player came ambling back in the room. And began to play something using only his left hand. His right arm held up his head.

For an hour or so Inky stood at the bar, his back to the dancing. He heard the shuffling feet and the laughing and the light panting breaths. He did not look. He drank his beer steadily and slowly. When the man next to him yelled across the room: “Hey, brother-in-law! What you say?” and stumbled away, Inky hitched himself up on that empty stool.

“You feet bearing a heavy load, no?” Lacy Livaudais, the bartender, said. He was a short dark man with a wide round face (like most of the people on the island). A curly shock of hair stood straight up in front of the little cap made from a woman’s stocking that covered the hairless back part of his head. Below the cap and down his neck you could see a slick whitish scar.

‘You nearly got killed once,” Inky said.

“Me?”

“You in the war?”

Lacy laughed. “And if I was, I’d have me a nice fine wig.”

“I guess you would,” Inky said.

“Gas fumes in the bilge.”

Inky nodded. “I sort of figured that.”

“Blew the face clean off the other guy.”

“I seen what they can do.”

“We was just kids.”

“Yea,” Inky said. “Kids get careless.”

He turned around on his stool and watched the room. It must be getting late, he thought, most of the old people had gone. There were two girls dancing together. He blinked and looked again. Two dark girls. And terrific dancers, he thought, watching their high-heeled shoes. He’d seen Lesbians dancing together before, but that was down in the special places in the French Quarter in New Orleans. … He watched the girls again.

“You think that funny, huh?” And Hector was standing right alongside him.

“Jesus,” Inky said, “nobody ever makes a sound or walks straight up to you.”

“You think that funny?”

“I never saw anything like it before, if that’s what you mean.”

Hector grinned. His long carefully combed hair was tousled and hanging in greasy pieces over his forehead. He brushed it back and tried to pat it in place.

“They say there ain’t any man on the island a good-enough dancer to keep up with them.”

Inky scratched his ear. The beer had cut down his vision so he had to peer hard to make out the figures of the girls in the half-light.

“Maybe that’s so,” Inky said, “they’re doing some mighty fancy steps.”

A girl came up to Hector. (Through the beer mist Inky struggled for her name: it was Annie. Sure, he told himself, sure.)

“Cecile and me,” she said, “we going on home.”

“Wait for this and I go on with you.”

“Hi,” Inky said.

“Hi.” You couldn’t tell from her face whether she remembered seeing him before.

“You get the grapes?”

“The what?” Hector asked.

“She was off hunting grapes at her special spot.”

Hector looked at her grinning. “Nobody eats muscats much, cost too much to fix ’em.”

“I wanted some, me,” Annie said.

Hector went on grinning. “It wasn’t grapes you was after.”

Annie spun around on her heel and ducking between people and dancers, disappeared. Hector kept on chuckling.

The accordion and the piano were playing faster and faster.

“Watch ’em now,” Hector said.

The other dancing couples had stopped trying to keep up. They stood around at the edges of the floor and watched. The two girls were still following. Inky squinted to watch their feet, but all he saw was a blur.

“Jesus,” he said softly.

“That something, no?”

“Sure is,” Inky said.

Over on the little bandstand, the man with the accordion was grinning widely, his two gold teeth flashing.

One of the girls was calling, or grunting. “Hu, hu!”

“Keep you breath,” a man called, “you going to need it, for sure.” And somebody laughed.

Inky gave up trying to follow the dancers. He stared up at the rafters and reached behind him for the beer. He was drunk enough now to be able to float off, away from his body. And he was out, somewhere, up with the dark beams by the roof tree, when he heard a couple of rapid heel taps, a soft thud and a swishing. And then the whole room cracked up with laughter.

He came back within himself and looked out of his eyes. Some of the watchers had rushed to the center of the floor. One of the girls was still standing, shrieking with laughter. The other was out of sight.

“She fall?”

“Didn’t you see, man?” Hector said. “Always happens, but I seen her do better than tonight.”

They had her on her feet now, and her doing up the bun at the back of her neck and calling for everybody to look on the floor for her hairpins. Some guys got down on their hands and knees and began to crawl around.

And a couple of the boys got a hand under each of her elbows and pushed her over to the bar. She was limping. … Inky looked down: one foot was bare.

He got off his stool and stepped back. The boys lifted her up on it, still by the elbows.

She was a good-looking girl, Inky thought. A little too short, but a good figure. And the highest heaviest breasts he had ever seen.

“I lost my shoe,” she was saying, still panting, “I lost my goddamn shoe.”

“Give the lady a beer,” somebody said.

“Pour it so there’s foam,” she said, “I like the foam.”

When it came she put her nose in the froth and then lifted her face, grinning. “Real cold!” And she began to drink, so quickly that some spilled on her breasts.

Inky found himself staring at them, wondering what sort of a bra she wore, and whether her skin would have little red crisscross marks from the stitching.

Then he remembered what he was thinking, and turned away, tossed off the last swallow in his glass, and left. He noticed Julius sitting at a table just inside the door and grinning at him, as he left.

He felt a little brittle the next morning. He did not work all day. He sent a kid over to the grocery for a sandwich at noon. He took a pillow up under the trees and one of the paperback books he’d bought nearly two months ago and hadn’t looked into. And in the heat of the day he’d dozed off.

He came flying out of his sleep, sitting straight up, and feeling that there was somebody staring at him. But there was nobody there and not a sound—not even a cricket or a locust.

So there had been somebody there, he knew. He got to his feet and looked around, but in the tangle of bushes and vines and wide palmetto leaves, he could see nothing. And after a minute or so the crickets began again.

He looked around for the hose—some men were scrubbing out the wheelhouse on one of the luggers tied down the wharf a way. And they had just started dragging the hose there.

So he put on his trunks and walked across the island to the open surf side. The sand was a muddy color, but it was smooth as he waded out and there were no rocks. A hundred yards farther out two porpoises were playing, their shiny black backs rising, arching and disappearing. A game of tag, Inky thought.

The sand dropped away. It seemed he had stepped over a ledge. And for a minute he went under the water, then he was treading, shaking his head to clear his nose and eyes. Then he started in a slow crawl down the beach, trying to mimic the slow rolling motion of the porpoises.